


My Soul, Your Skin

by followsrabbit



Series: soulmates [1]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:42:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8942299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/pseuds/followsrabbit
Summary: The name 'William' had appeared on her skin shortly after she had fled home for Madrid, and had remained there, unfading, ever since.But the mark didn't mean that Noora had to believe in soulmates.





	

The name curled along her inner thigh had never hurt before. In delicate, charcoal letters, it had darkened the pale white flesh of her upper leg for over a year, but this was the first time Noora had ever felt it.

(The names, according to science journals and gossip magazines alike, came randomly. Most believed they belonged to a soulmate. They manifested during adolescence usually, sometimes at twelve, sometimes at fifteen, sometimes at eighteen, sometimes _never_. Vilde hadn’t gotten hers yet, as she bemoaned on a daily basis.)

All Noora knew was that the name _William_ had appeared just beneath the seam of her underwear shortly after she had turned fifteen and fled home for Madrid, and had remained there, unfading, ever since.

It was a common enough name. The world, Noora knew, was much larger than Norway, and had plenty of _William’s_ that might wear her name on their wrist or chest or back. _Maybe_ her stomach had twisted the first time Vilde had started talking about William Magnusson, because that name was _hers_ , and she didn’t like to think of some ‘97 asshole ruining it. But she could compartmentalize. It wasn’t as though it could be the same William, and even if it were—well, Noora liked to claim that she didn’t believe in soulmates. (She wished she didn’t. A stupid risk to trust someone just because an inexplicable force of nature branded his name onto your body.)

But now as she watched William—Penetrator William, not _her_ William—shred Vilde’s bravado to bits, she felt utterly, annoyingly aware of the letters inscribed on her thigh.

“Because you’re not good enough,” he said to Vilde, voice and face equally cold.

Each letter _throbbed_. They throbbed when she stepped into Vilde’s place, and released all the disdain she’d pent up over his abysmal treatment of the school’s female population, and they throbbed when he smiled at her, and they throbbed when she brushed his shoulder as she walked away.

(Which was a pity, considering that she’d otherwise never felt better about herself.)

* * *

 He started approaching her after that. Speaking to her. _Flirting_ with her.

She started referring to him as _Willhelm_ , half to irritate him, and half to disassociate him from the name on her thigh.

* * *

 She was curled up in William’s bed, steadfast in her decision to stay fully clothed even after she’d crawled beneath his sheets, and even more steadfast in snapping her eyes away from William as soon as he pulled off his shirt. The name scribbled along his chest was small, too small to read without a better, closer look, but undeniably there.

It did something to her throat, her chest, her stomach to know that it was there. That he had one.

“You don’t want to see my name?” he asked as he flopped down onto his side of her pillow barrier. It sounded more like a challenge than a question.

Noora burrowed deeper into her side of his bed. “I know your name. Willhelm.” When she felt William retaliate with a strike of a pillow, she flailed a hand behind her to fight it off, tilting her smile into her blonde hair.

“Most people are more curious.”

Noora huffed. “The whole concept of the names is horrible. People acting like they’re an act of fate, when we don’t know why they started showing up, or whether they’re actually about-- _soulmates_ , or just a cosmic fluke. Like a few markings on your skin mean that you belong to someone. It’s sick.”

She didn’t have to look over at William to know that his lips were twitching. That was the only reaction she ever seemed to draw from him, no matter how many insults she hurled. “You have one then.”

Her lips parted, and stayed so for a few seconds of hesitation too long. “I do not.”

She couldn’t help herself from flipping over to look at William now. His blankets covered his chest and the name printed upon it, so Noora allowed herself to meet his amused gaze. “You do.”

When her tongue darted across her lips, she could still taste the leftover cocoa he’d done his best to make for her. “You’re so sure,” she said, heartbeat hiccuping as she pushed for his reasoning.

Gaze steady, William only answered, “I am,” before turning to his vibrating phone.

“And why is that?”

He shrugged as he swiped his screen unlocked. “You wouldn’t be so bothered by it otherwise.”

And Noora could have replied that first-hand observation of Vilde’s soulmate-driven-anxiety had offered plenty of reasons for outrage, or that her parents’ self-absorbed romance had provided her with a wealth of anti-soulmate fodder—but then William read Eskild’s text, and talk of soulmates fell away.

(It didn't mean anything that her mark had gone unusually warm.)

* * *

 They hadn’t stopped kissing since reaching his apartment. Once Noora had given into the temptation to press her lips to William’s outside the Penetrators’ offense of a fundraiser, any and all willpower to flee had evaporated. (She was sure that she _could_ , of course, but she didn’t want to, so what was the point of dwelling on it?)

William certainly wasn’t keen to let her. He kept his fingers running through her hair, then tracing her cool cheeks, then wrinkling the cream fabric of her turtleneck as he clutched at her hips. Ever moving, but always somewhere, always on her.

Still, she broke away for a breath and to say, “I’m not sleeping here tonight,” when he guided her into his bedroom.

“You are,” William said between nips at her neck, his face lost above the high neck of her shirt.

“No…” Noora drew the lie out with a light laugh.

Sighing a distinctly put-out breath, William lifted his head to meet her gaze, abandoning his perusal of her pale skin. “We can pretend Eva has your keys again,” he said, his innocent tone belied by his crooked smirk.

“Eva did have my keys,” she protested, even as her eyes hitched shut at the warmth of his lips along her jaw.

“That your flatmate is out then,” he murmured into her skin. “Whatever you want. Just stay.”

And Noora felt herself nodding, long before she forced herself to say, “Okay.”

His mouth found hers again; she could feel William's grin against her lips.

*

Trading her turtleneck for the light blue t-shirt William had just thrown to her, Noora kept herself and her mark carefully faced away from him. She didn’t know how William would react to the sight of his name printed just beneath the hem of his shirt, but she imagined it would involve either a good deal of smugness or abject panic, and had no interest in learning which.

Just like she had no interest in reading the name on his chest. Zero. None at all.

“You never said where your mark was,” William murmured into her hair as she sat down beside him on his bed. Within a moment, he had her lying on her side and tucked within his firm arms.

She tilted her head over her shoulder to drawl her lips across his. “Goodnight, Willhelm.”

* * *

It wasn’t until her world was falling down around her, until dread over Nikko’s messages—the _photo_ —had consumed her thoughts and life, that Noora dared peek at William’s chest. Nestled within his arms, hours of much-needed sleep still dusting her eyes with sand, she didn’t want to ever move or think or open Facebook again. She just wanted to lie here with William, pretend that she had never met his brother, and mute her thoughts to the rhythm of his breathing.

Carefully, Noora pulled at the neck of his shirt. Just far enough to reveal the small, almost unreadable name looped onto his ribcage. A sob hitched her throat.

“I thought you didn’t care about the names,” William’s sleepy voice brushed her forehead as he opened as his eyes and pressed his lips to her temple.

And she didn’t _want_ to—but in her loneliest days after leaving home, she had wondered about the _William_ that had appeared so suddenly on her flesh. Wondered if she would ever feel like _this_ with him, about him, with anyone, about anyone. Known and chosen and loved. Knowing and choosing and loving.

In spite of herself, Noora slipped her fingers past his shirt to graze the familiar letters of her name.

* * *

 William didn’t see his name on her skin until he had her clothes discarded across his bedroom floor for the first time. His fingers and mouth spent an inordinate amount of time brushing and scorching and learning that particular spot once he found the thin calligraphy. (She was also fairly certain that he murmured, _So fucking hot,_ more than once as he dragged her black underwear past its letters and down her thighs.)

“I knew it,” he said later with a closemouthed kiss at her cheek, once exhaustion had seized the both of them and he had his arms curled around her bare waist.

“You did not.”

A hushing noise of censure. “I did.”

Noora rolled her eyes, slanted a smile into her pillow, and leaned back into his embrace.


End file.
